I created this blog to record our RV trips; it morphed into what's happening, life in our retirement lane, what's on my mind and telling my tales of life aka my outlet for writing. I have almost totally migrated to Facebook where I communicate daily, instantly with family/friends all over the country and world. COPYWRIGHT NOTICE: All photos, stories, writings on this blog are the property of myself, Patricia Morrison and may not be used, copied, without my permission most often freely given.

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Wednesday, March 27, 2013

If it's not one thing it's your mother

December 13, Christmas Party
Florence looking at Santa's baby

So goes a pop culture quote that includes books, TV shows, magazine articles, t shirts, even Robin Williams' sayings and some reach back to Freud blaming it on your mother. But that it has been the mother again here, a siege for us beginning with the phone call Sunday afternoon: Jerry's 96 year old mother, Florence, (aka MIL=mother in law) fell in her room at the skilled facility where she has resided for two years. She has been our responsibility since 1980 when her husband passed away and we acquired the task of looking out for and putting up with the demands and annoyances of this dependent, manipulative woman as her other two younger children opt out. Truth, Jerry's full sister, dead since 2004 but who was alive at the time would have stepped up but she had her own siege of medical and financial problems and was not really able to do much. So it has been that we got the Old Maid. At 96, you think there is not much time left but they live long lives in her family and she is the last of the 5 sisters, the youngest, the baby and the less stable mentally and the nastiest. All this has been told before, our lives whirling along and finally we have had some degree of freedom with her in the nursing home. We have been concerned about this potential, she had a walker to use for stability but with her dementia and bull headedness she often neglects to use it in her room. The orthopedic surgeon wondered if she had previously fallen. How does anyone know, her hearing is almost non existant, she does not communicate, she attempts to be secretive, to hide things, much as the hoarding we cleared from her room. That is another story we filled 4 big trash cans with old napkins, boxes, paper plates, old newspapers, old church bulletins, envelopes, and the worst used disposable underwear. The facility staff try to not intrude on a resident's privacy but after I discovered the garbage upon garbage, some other protocol must be followed.

Who knows how it happened, they found her on the floor near her bed, and in pain. She has a high pain threshold and an ability to ignore aches so when she complained, they knew it was serious. An ambulance transport to emergency at the Gunderson hospital in La Crosse and ever since 4:00PM Sunday it has been a tilt a whirl; her partial hip replacement surgery at 11:00PM, being up out of bed Monday morning, standing yesterday and declared medically stable and dischargeable back to the SNF today. Medically stable says nothing about mentally unstable and there's not much to be done about that. She convinced the hospital attendants to call her son and when she got Jerry on the phone she was belligerent and demanded he come get her. We requested they not connect a phone, but they try to do what a patient wants or what makes their life easier. I wish her daughter had interest and would come and sit at the facility, taking care and be pushed to frustration but that is not going to happen and so we make do. I watch my own tongue and attitude because I do not want to be mean to an old lady, someday I'll be old too, but what a predicament. Long discussions with the therapists and nurses at the home this morning about protocols and a new level of care for her. Will she comply, will she attempt to do something she should not and reinjure herself, what next? All questions to be answered as we look toward Easter. I'll not be Easter decorating this year, too much else to deal with.

Full healing may take 6 months. This is a time of instability when anything can happen. A cousin reminded me that Aunt Berniece died of complications from a broken hip, but Florence has a strong heart and body in ways unbelievable for a 96 year old. Many nurses marveled at how good she looks for 96 and then they marveled at how nasty she could be, how she could be foul in disposition and demeaning, I am not surprised. We hope progress continues. Such is life.

2 comments:

PS so far so good, she ate lunch in a wheel chair in the dining room of the facility and attended the Wednesday afternoon church service. Therapy was scheduled but they deferred until tomorrow, she was very tired and was put to bed. I learned that the 3rd & 4th days after general anesthetic are critical so one wonders about rapid hospital discharge. Well I don't wonder, acute care is not needed once the patient is "medically stable which they declare she is.

my mom fractured her hip and it was a long road to recovery. I'm sorry for the trials this woman puts you through but you're right, we will be old too one day and all we can hope for is to keep our faculties for as long as possible and not be too much of a burden on anyone else.

Be like the fox in the pack of hounds

MY NEW 2012 BLOG JUST FOR BOOKS--wander over

Addicted to reading and writing

This blog is my outlet for words. I have always loved to read and write. I suppose I am a woman of words--too many words according to Jerry! Friends and relatives often commented about letters I would write. That's pre-email. Later closest friends encouraged me to write, always thinking somewhere inside me was a best seller book. So now in retirement one would think I have time to do that but, huh uh! Where does the time go?

My new blog dedicated solely to the books I read, review and discuss is up which will allow me to have more space here.

Follow the link above or Google Pat's Books Read and Reviewed

Quote about Books

I found this scrap clipping clearing out paperwork, there is no author, I wished I'd written it but I didn't and I don't know who did: "Your books are your autobiography; they map your history, reflect your tastes, hold emotional moments between covers."

Back Deck 2016

Me with new hat Quebec

Mountie and Me

Me in Nova Scotia, Halifax with Big Guy

Me aboard the Celebrity Summit

Cruising the North Atlantic October 2014

LaCrosse Bridges

Bridges of LaCrosse

To My Little Boy (Author Unknown)

Found this in an old Country Ideals Magazine, Vol 59, No. 3

How often as I watched you at your playI wished that through the years, you might remainA boy as upon a summer's day.Changeless and glad and unaware of pain.Memory of your laughter falls with sadness in my heart,When you were so young, so sure, so unafraid;You'd not heard there would be a time to partOr that the road leads down into the shade.Would I might have kept you from what all must learn--The doubt, the fever, the battles lost and wild.Would I might build a world that would not turnTo dust beneath the footsteps of a child!Son, this can never be I know,Yet it is out of earth that flowers grow.